The Canberra visual arts scene in 2016 offered thematic and aesthetic diversity, and of course ran the gamut through the good, the bad and the ugly. We Canberrans are fortunate in the variety and number of exhibitions we are able to see, and all exhibiting organisations should be congratulated for continuing to support the visual arts community in times when the government arts dollar is at best precarious and at worst subject to inane decision-making.
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Canberra Contemporary Art Space (CCAS) provided three of my top five exhibitions. CCAS regularly delivers innovative and excellent exhibitions, and 2016 was an especially good year. Surprisingly, CCAS experienced a more-than-substantial funding cut from the Australia Council – a great shame given the integral role such an organisation plays in this city's (and elsewhere's) visual arts community.
For me the standout exhibition of 2016 was Marie Hagerty's Blue Blood. This showcased an exceptional talent and proved the ongoing validity of painting through the artist's powerfully incisive and aesthetically beautiful work. It was an important and perhaps even a landmark exhibition.
The curator of Blue Blood, CCAS's director David Broker, also curated Thoroughly Modern, a postmodern look at the "influence" of Modernism on contemporary practice. This was a clever, witty and visually embracing selection of work by six artists and provided intellectual as well as aesthetic stimulation.
Also at CCAS was Frazer Bull-Clark's The Big Shave. This is another show where wit and visual excitement were combined to produce a challenging collage of the varieties of masculinity as exemplified in film over many decades. Bull-Clark plays an adroit hand with his juxtapositions and confrontations with identity, and The Big Shave's clever presentation remains an unexpected personal highlight (I don't go to movies).
At Form Studio and Gallery in Queanbeyan a number of exhibitions were exciting, and among these was Valerie Kirk's Past in the Present and the Future. This was (broadly) a refined and sophisticated exposition on the ephemeral nature of existence and the passage of time. Using the metaphor of the fossil, Kirk's astute use of contrast opened her theme to the viewer in beautifully subtle ways.
It has been my experience over a number of years that PhotoAccess presents a balanced and stimulating series of exhibitions. With the exception of a couple of clangers this did not change in 2016. I would like to include the entire program as one of my top choices and not single out one of the many excellent exhibitions it included.
2016 was another great year for the visual arts in our region. I congratulate everybody involved for their contributions and look forward to further sensory, aesthetic and intellectual stimulation from our artists and galleries in 2017.
